The Pratts were sick people. I know now why they became psychotic about having a baby and how their isolation on the island made it worse, so they could no longer make sense of reality and understand that what they were doing was wrong. Dr. Winter explained this to me before she learned that I had told so many lies. They had been turned down for adoptions for fifteen years, then lost the one child they were given. They took me in so they could mother me. But then came my baby. She was the gift from God they had been praying for. And I was just an evil force trying to get in the way of God’s will.
But Dr. Winter told me something else after that night in the woods. She wanted me to be prepared. She told me that when they find the Pratts, or the Petersons, if they ever do, they will tell a different story. They will tell the story of a scared teenager who showed up at their home, asking for help. Asking to be saved from a wretched family. They will explain that I was always able to leave. They will use the things I did in my moments of weakness, laughing with them, eating with them, letting them hug me and kiss my forehead and tell me they loved me. I have been such a liar. And they will use that against me.
But it won’t matter. Because I will find a way to make them pay.
It was not easy to wait those last two years to escape. Being nothing more than a sister to my own baby, yearning to come home so I could find the sister who had disappeared—I would binge on their kindness until it made me sick. I was so hungry for it, and my hunger disgusted me. I told myself I was just working at my plan, to make them trust me. But that would also be a lie.
It was even harder to make Rick see me and want me and make me his lover. And when I was pretending to love him, I feasted as well on his love, what I thought was love, what I pretended was love. I feasted until I was sick from that, too.
The night I gave Bill the pills, I signaled Rick with the phone. I collected my daughter from the small bed in Lucy’s bedroom while Lucy snored, her fat belly rising and falling beneath the covers. I got all the money I could find from Bill’s wallet and Lucy’s dresser. I carried my daughter down to the dock and put her in the rowboat under a blanket. I told her to wait there, under the blanket, and if she could be very good and very quiet and stay hidden, I would take her to a very special, magical place. I watched for the boat. And when I saw it come closer, I called out to him.
Help me! Please. Take me away from this place!
He maneuvered the boat to the dock. He saw the blanket in the rowboat, and my daughter squirming beneath it, and he called out again. What’s under there? Is that the child?
I did not answer him but he knew. I could tell by the anger I saw on his face. I had been planting seeds in his head for months and I had become convinced that I had destroyed his trust in the Pratts and replaced it with my love. I knew he believed that they had told me about Alaska, what he had done there. And I made him believe that they thought he was an immoral man.
I thought I had read him. I thought I had given it enough time. He would see how desperate I was and take us to shore. But I was wrong. When I jumped onto that boat, he did not agree to help my daughter and me escape. Instead, he did exactly what he had done before. You’re gonna take that child back to the house, he said.
The shock of it flooded my brain and I felt dizzy. I thought I had been a good student of Emma and Mrs. Martin. I had done everything right. I had figured out what he desired and I had become that. I had deciphered his relationship with the Pratts and I had unraveled it, slowly and with patience and what I thought was devious cunning. And in those stolen moments in the woods or on the boat when his body was on my body, when our skin was touching and our arms and legs were wrapped together like a knot that will never come undone, I thought I was being calculating. Every sigh. Every moan. Every kiss. Every touch. It was all calculated to be that thing he desired. The woman who needed to be rescued. I felt so clever that I could feel his love in the way he devoured me with such force but then held me with such tenderness. That was what I thought.
I was stupid. I was weak. I did not have the same appeal that Mrs. Martin and Emma had. Whatever Rick needed from me was easily undone by the weight of his debt to Bill and Lucy. I had not destroyed it. Not with my cunning and not with my sex power. Not even with my love, which had become real, mixing with the hate.
I will say this quickly and not say it ever again. Rage took control of my mind. It was bigger than my reason and more powerful than the currents that were always trying to bring me back. My daughter was waiting for me in the rowboat. And this man was going to keep me from saving her. From saving us. I was filled with an army of rage, with soldiers from every corner of my life heeding the battle cry. Soldiers from the times I reached for my mother and she pushed me away. Soldiers from the times my father failed to protect us. Soldiers from Hunter and Emma and that woman from the court. And soldiers from the joy I allowed myself in the arms of these monsters, Bill and Lucy and Rick. One by one, the soldiers of rage formed an army that was unstoppable.
I picked up a metal gas container and I hit Rick in the head, knocking him over the side. I threw the container in the water and I didn’t wait for a second to pass before I got behind the steering wheel and back on the throttle and then up. I steered the hull right over his body, crushing it into the dock. I reversed and did it again. Twice and then a third time. The soldiers fueled each strike, the final one leaving him still, floating facedown in the cruel, cold water that had shown me no mercy.
I took my daughter from the rowboat and we drove in The Lucky Lady—so fast, we were both holding on with all our strength—into darkness and far up the coast. I was not thinking that this would make it harder to find out the location of the island. I was only thinking about getting far, far away. When we ran out of gas, we got pulled into a harbor by the current. I let the boat run up against the brush and then I just let that boat go, into the harbor, with the ignition still turned on but the motor stalled. I carried my daughter to a gas station and called a taxi to take us to Portland. I had four hundred dollars of the Pratts’ money and I would use it to get home. I noted the name of the town so I could send someone back to find the Pratts. Rockland. But that had not been enough, and my stupidity gave them the time they needed to escape.